


Telemachus

by feldman



Series: John Hughes AU [5]
Category: Farscape
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:32:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dominar has a soft spot for the scrappy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Telemachus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fbf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fbf/gifts).



> Written from a challenge by FBF, "accidental baby acquisition, farscape, Rygel."

Royal bloodlines on Hyneria were not carefully managed breeding programs where children were cultivated and cosseted like blossoms. To be born into a royal house was statistically a death sentence, the cull rate from egg pool through to coronation breathtaking. To wive was not to thrive by a long shot.

As a Dominar, Rygel XVI had wived aplenty, and thrived about as well as any previous Rygel. He took care in those he brought to court, always balancing the female's gifts with the risks that came along with; having intelligent offspring was desired, but their scheming aunts and uncles were not. He subscribed to the Dominar's customary philosophy that if one wanted to rule and protect all of Hyneria, it wasn't too much to ask that they first survive the cutthroat rigors of the egg pool. He wasn't a cruel father--he wasn't a Rygel XII letting gillblades nest in the nursery reeds, but he did allow a healthy level of natural perfidy at court. 

One can adore the sight of a large healthy brood, and yet not mourn when none of them are hardy enough to survive the harrowing conditions of a royal court breeding pool. A father is ever hopeful, and eager to help those who help themselves.

So when Rygel peers down from his thronesled at the tall and sturdy seventeen year old Sebacean-Human hybrid who has come to court once again on Hyneria, he ignores the raised earbrows of his courtiers and wives gathered along the esplanade. Let them wonder. None of their houses have yet given Rygel a legacy that has made it so far.

He harrumphs and studies the boy, astonished that a being so big had at one point fit inside him. Not that he'd been a speck, but that such a speck had floated in a shallow ocean for days, had burrowed into his belly like a parasite, had been replanted like a tuber, had transformed in mere seconds from a water-breather to an air-breather in the midst of a firefight, and had since grown to such dimensions.

He smiles, baring broad flat teeth and crinkling eyes the color of that fateful shallow sea, long since burned away. "Papa Ryge, thanks for inviting me back."

Such a fine strong son. Luckily he'd survived his parents' care so far.

Rygel waves him up to the dais, gesturing to a cushion set at the foot of his thronesled pedestal. "My tenacious sprog, the time has come to teach you statecraft."


End file.
